Google the phrase “are converse vegan” and you will find a debate raging. There are many different ideas flying around out there.

I decided to attempt to resolve the controversy once and for all by writing to Converse and asking.

Their response:

Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, we do not have any products that are certain to be Vegan-friendly. While the majority of our materials are animal-by-product free, the glue in our products can sometimes contain some animal by-products. So, it is not possible for us to advertise our products as being truly Vegan.

We apologize if this prevents you from being able to wear our product. We certainly hope it does not because there is nothing in the world like a pair of Converse shoes!

If we can assist you further, please let us know.

Jessica
Converse.Com
Customer Service

I found this odd however, because 1. it seemed kind of wishy washy…

“the glue can sometimes contain animal by- products” ?

If you remember my post “do shoes have animal based glues in them?”, my conclusion was “not anymore”. Was this wrong?

So I replied:

Hi Jessica,

Thanks for the response! I really appreciate it.

Do you have any idea what kind of animal by products are in the glue? I have done some internet research on the topic of animal glues and read some articles which say most glue nowadays is animal free, so I would be quite interested to know specifically what exactly animal by products in the glue means!

This would really be going above and beyond but I believe it would clear up a lot of controversy on the internet about whether converse are truly vegan friendly. If you google this topic there is a lot of contradictory information out there, so this would be MUCH appreciated!

Thank You!